Pulmonary hypertension, gender issues, and quality of care

Download the Issue @ a Glance podcast Subscribe to the EHJ Podcast !Graphic1 With increasing options of modern medicine, proper use of diagnostics and therapeutics has become an important issue. Indeed, to address this issue, the European Society of Cardiology has started a special journal on this subject this year, namely the EHJ Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes , under the leadership of Adam Timmis and his Editorial team.1 Many colleagues have tried to define measures of quality in cardiology based on objective measures2 or patient-reported outcomes3 In this issue, the Spanish Society of Cardiology and of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery under the leadership of Jose-Luis Lopez-Sendon and colleagues from the Hospital Universitario La Paz in Madrid, Spain outline their perspective on ‘ Quality markers in cardiology: measures of outcomes and clinical practice ’.4 The authors therein tried to define markers to measure quality of results (outcomes metrics) as well as quality measures related to better results in clinical practice (performance metrics). Gender importantly influences the onset, symptoms,5 and natural course6 of many cardiovascular diseases as well as the use and outcomes of diagnostic and therapeutic measures.7–9 The EUGenMed is a project sponsored by the European Union with the aim to develop a roadmap for a better implementation of gender issues in European biomedical and health research. In … 1: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif